Mixed changing room - is this considered ok these days?

Exactly.

I’m glad you are able to access swimming, along with your DS.

But all mixed sex excludes many women (including me).

Which means creating systems that allow them to participate in public life, including swimming, yes?

Good.

I’m sympathetic to women living under ALL
patriarchal structures.

It's OK for some, but many fundamentalists would still insist that no men are present, and that all the women dress like that.

Mine have been brilliant at holding the line (the receptionist very clearly says ‘female’ as in ‘female gym’ which I thought was dead weird at first but that was way back in circa 2015 so now I realise why the strange phrasing!) but the ‘proportionate means for legitimate aim’ is argued on the basis that there are 9 other council owned leisure centres and the one with women only gym room is in the area with the highest percentage of orthodox religious residents who are categorised as a ‘hard to reach group’ for health and exercise messaging.

I don’t know if they’ve ever been challenged by a trans user.

A mixed changing village is the only type of set up that I can use with my disabled DSes who are too old to come into a woman's changing room with me. We have to travel to visit centres as our local one has single sex. So I do not want all single sex but agree that having both available is the ideal.

It's a complicated issue, certainly, and I don't want to over-simplify it. However, I do think a lot of GC feminists are suddenly using the "BUT MUSLIMS!" argument to try and advance their cause without properly understanding the people they're suddenly claiming to champion, and the issues they really face.

It annoys me and feels ignorant and hypocritical. While I appreciate a lot of left-wing politics has got a bit overrun by gender woo and GC feminists hate this, just because a group has ideas that you're sympathetic towards in one area doesn't mean you should support them wholeheartedly.

Elsewhere on here I've seen people arguing that the most GC candidate in the London Mayoral Election is from Britain First. Does that mean you should vote for them? No!!!!

Sure, we should care about Muslims being excluded from healthy activities and do more to help them, but I don't think suddenly trying to co-opt ideas thousands of years old to make a point is really the way to do it, and I feel like it's rather cynically using women who are excluded because their religious leaders constantly find ways to justify it, not because of the layout of the changing rooms.

And how do they define "women only"?

There are plenty of religions where the strict adherents require segregation by sex. It's not just Islam.

And frankly, I'm beginning to think Islam is less sexist than gender ideology for most who practice it (not your Taliban etc - actually there's a reason why they're called the TRAliban - lot of things in common like not giving a shit about how women feel - they have absolutely shown that if they can do things against women's consent they will)

Also, these changing rooms will often exclude disabled people. They exclude my friend who mostly needs a wheelchair because it takes her a long time to get ready to swim (and changed afterwards) and she's not ok with being so vulnerable with men around. The stats on sexual assault of disabled women are already grim - why put them in a position where it's known sexual offending is higher?

Again - the the main groups of people mixed sex changing is inclusive of is voyeurs and sex offenders. The truly inclusive option is having single sex options plus mixed sex. Having these options also would probably deter the sex offenders as there's less chance of having unconsenting single women and children in those spaces.

Loads of leisure centres have more than one pool. Mine has three.

There are women-only sessions in two of the pools at various times during the week.

I see what you mean. But we aren't in Afghanistan.

I feel a bit conflicted about women who wear the hijab in the UK, for example, because I know strong, intelligent, professional women who are very insistent that it is their choice to wear it, and yet I still find it difficult to accept it when it only applies to women and not to men.

I think ultimately you can disapprove of it and still accept that people have a right to follow the rules of their religion in an essentially secular western democracy. Perhaps over time more exposure to people from different religions or no religions will dilute some of the more conservative aspects of it.

But in the meantime I think it's important to make space for them to participate in society as fully as possible.

Religious women aren't the only women who want and need single sex spaces. But they are some of the women who will be excluded if these things don't exist.

But women who follow orthodox religions won't swim in a pool with men in it anyway, so the changing rooms aren't the issue (for them specifically).

Surely it's a more feminist solution to encourage women to reject an ideology that's so against their best interests? I say that as someone who was a fundamentalist Christian for years.

Then what’s your solution?

Because single sex changing allows both women who follow orthodox religions and women with no religion to participate in swimming at leisure centres.

That's not what I said.

So women who are living under the patriarchy of Islam should just be thrown under the bus by feminists and forced out of public life?

No.

A man once lay on the floor in order to push his head under the side of my cubicle to spy on me changing out of my swim suit.

I won’t use unisex change areas since then.

Thankfully my nearest pool has men/women/family so mothers can change with their sons AND women who are swimming alone are not subjected to male voyeurs.

I'm saying it's a bit ridiculous for feminists to care about the more extreme elements of Islam when it's such a brutally anti-women ideology.

How many women do you think get to go swimming in Afghanistan?

Sorry, what patriarchal ideology do you believe feminists are propping up? I'm not sure I understand your point.

Were they using mixed changing facilities?

That’s not true. I live in an area with a lot of women who wear the hijab and pre lockdown there were more and more coming to the pool - more girls joining in school swim lessons. Mums taking little kids to the pool and joining in Aqua aerobics classes.

I expect there are some particularly religious types who would be be working a hundred miles of men they aren’t related to but they aren’t the majority.

Well, I appreciate that's an issue, but it's a different one to that being discussed here.

I just find it grossly hypocritical of feminists to suddenly care about the religious angle here when (a) they haven't really thought it through and (b) in doing so they're propping up an ideology which is gruesomely, disgustingly patriarchal. What's excluding women the most here? The men in charge of religion. It certainly ain't the layout of changing rooms.